sexual assault

The #MeToo movement—as it emerges in social interaction and digital communication—is a discursive formation that suggests at least two frames of linguistic analysis. This column seeks to unpack the hashtag’s emergence in co-oxygenated social interaction, its transformation through digital communication, and closes with brief thoughts on its limitations for transformative social justice change.

In less than the time it takes you to read this, someone in the United States will be sexually assaulted. One person is assaulted every 98 seconds; almost 37 people in an hour and 888 people a day. There is less than a 1 percent chance that any given perpetrator will go to jail. Rape is underreported, under-prosecuted, and disbelieved. Ours, as anthropologist Peggy Sanday might say, is a rape prone society.

Since its formal initiation after the 2017 AAA Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, the Members’ Programmatic Advisory and Advocacy Committee (MPAAC) has made significant progress in its priority areas. Led by the gender equity seats, Gabriela Torres and Dianna Shady, MPAAC convened the Sexual Harassment Working Group in February 2018.